Coffin Fit (The Grateful Undead series Book 4)

by Stec, Susan

  ~~~

  Nineteen

  ~~~

  Marcus and Dorius stepped out of the drawing rooms with an excuse to check on Camillo, Antoinette's mate. The air in the room had grown tense with past hours and a lack of communication from the Stech team. Dorius wanted privacy to attempt contact with someone, anyone stateside, and then arrange a call-back when they were back in the drawing room with the wolves.

  The brothers made haste down perpetually guarded passageways—lit by torches that flickered with low light—in the direction of a staircase that would take them to their secluded quarters. They spoke softly. The castle passageways had many ears at that time of night. The Morizzio brothers learned long ago though the immortals in the castle were brethren, not all could be trusted.

  "Did you send Warren out to the Stech home?" Dorius asked.

  "Yes, but it'll be close to daylight before he gets there," Marcus answered.

  "What about Dennis?" Dorius asked. "Betty has become quite fond of him. Have you called him?"

  Dennis ran errands, kept up with paperwork, the staff, and answered phones at BAMVC, the compound in Miami. He was always up on all the latest gossip, fabulous apparel sales, and wore his fangs proudly. Dennis was a catchall for anything Dorius wanted to dump on someone. Tall, blond, and always flawlessly dressed, he had a great sense of humor.

  "When I called to talk to Warren," Marcus said, "Dennis was the first person I asked because he and Christopher also talk often, but he had nothing for us."

  "I will be having a little tête-à-tête with Elizabeth," Dorius said through clenched teeth. "And I assure you, it will not be comfortable for her."

  "You know, brother, I have found disciplinary conversations do not work with Susan. It's better to extol her accomplishments in a given situation than chide injudiciousness . . . Yet add carefully placed repercussions for what might have transpired had luck not been on her side."

  "I do not need to dance around my mate when it comes to discipline, Marcus!" Dorius hissed the angry words.

  * * *

  "What the hell is that?" Chick asked Paul and Resi.

  "It's an armadillo, Nan," Resi answered. "Jeez, you've lived in Florida, what? Forty years? And you've never seen an armadillo?"

  "Pieces and parts, road kill, never on all fours," Chick said, "and only from inside a moving vehicle. The little guy looks like a Nazi World-War-One tank."

  Paul stared at the animal. "Yeah, it kinda does."

  They stood behind scrub oak surrounding the large fans of a palm frond. The armadillo waddled atop a cement breaker in front of the neighbor's sleeping house.

  "Are they nocturnal?" Resi asked.

  "Yes, and they like the water because it keeps them cool," Paul said as they strolled closer. "I think that little bugger is headed to our cypress knees to look for termites."

  "Gross," Resi said.

  "Yeah," Chick crouched to get closer, "that coming from the kid that sucks blood for fuel."

  Chick reached for the animal.

  Paul yelled, "Watch out!"

  The armadillo leapt eight feet into the air. With a tremendous splash of water, Mort sprung out of the lake and caught it midair.

  Chick hobbled back, holding her chest. "Jesus Christ, you almost gave me a heart attack! What the hell?"

  Resi burst out laughing. Paul turned away, plucking a noisy cell phone from the back pocket of his jeans.

  As Mort smiled and dribbled lake water, the Armadillo tried to latch onto his rock-like arm with huge vamp-critter fangs.

  "Uh, sorry. I thought I'd save you a nasty bite, Chick," Mort said at a slow and nerve-grating speed.

  Chick's knuckles dug into her fleshy hips. "Well, you scared the shit out of me!"

  Upstairs lights went on in the house, nestled in the woods behind them. Chick bounced a thumb over her left shoulder. "And looky there, you woke the neighbors."

  "That's the least of our problems." Paul turned toward the Stech house. "Susan, Christopher, and Lily are in Purgatory. Jake is dealing with an inebriated fairy and Dorius's mate."

  "That drunken fairy wouldn't be Gibbie, would it?"

  "Nan, is that all you heard?" Resi said. "Mom's in the sewers where doppelgangers roam and the skies are not visible at night."

  "Yeah, I heard that. Susan's gonna get her ass kicked, and you sounded like a bad country song." Chick huffed as she tried to keep up with Paul.

  * * *

  The mist of smoke over the center of a red duvet coverlet condensed into a rich, weighty mass. Arms formed and fell to the bottom of its triangular body. A mouth with needle sharp teeth unfolded. I felt like a character in a Stephen King novel and flattened myself against the door.

  "Who are you, and why did you two dart back here when we walked into Purgatory?"

  Red eyes blinked, and the creature said, "I'm Luna. The name is a gift from Gaire." It waved a trail of smoke in the direction of the handsome man on the bed beside it.

  "The doppelganger chatting it up with the dragon shifter and fairy at the bar is my mother," Luna said. "And the chick with the street mentality is Jane. She was a host of mine. The serial-killing doppelganger had picked her up from a street corner in Orlando while I was wearing her."

  Lily stepped between Christopher and me. "Actually, you and all your brethren are killers. And you do not have a mother. A doppelganger is incapable of reproduction. I will add fabricator to the doppelganger elucidation."

  I tried to gasp silently, right before I reached around and covered the little demon's mouth. "She's just a child," I apologized.

  "She's my mate," Christopher hissed.

  Lily moved her sweet little face and mumbled through my fingers, "Actually, I am both."

  The thing with the toothy mouth rose a bit, forming a wispy cloud of soot with blinking red eyes. "The elders ask us fledglings to refer to our guardian as Mother. I get it. A joke, right? Not to mention totally sexist—I could call it Dad. And I don't murder my hosts. I'm totally against killing to enjoy another's life. But this is firmly discouraged by my kind. Anyway, you're right, demon kid. Just about every other doppelganger kills the host they duplicate—anonymity and all."

  "Thank you for that aspiring exploration into your personal preferences, while confirming my credibility," Lily said, "but duplicating another is not a commendable attribute."

  I briefly entertained stuffing Lily under the bed.

  Luna stared at me, and I must have looked pretty freaked because she turned her glaring red eyes back to Lily. "The humans I double up on go about their usual business, none the wiser. I put enough space between us to assure there are no issues, so that way my elders can only discourage, but they can't come down on me." The red eyes turned to look at the hunky guy lying next to her. "Well, not for that, anyway."

  The half-naked cutie smiled at the doppelganger and then turned to Lily. "We are who we are. And you are who you are."

  "How cliché, yet factual. I concede." Lily smiled up at me. "These two can be trusted."

  I let out a breath I'd been holding. After being briefed by Christopher about Dorius's friend, I knew the good doppelganger, the one wearing Jane, was out at the bar with Jake and Gibbie. I felt mild relief, and could even push myself off the door and stand without wavering.

  "So, Luna, you recklessly tempted a killer while wearing Jane?" Christopher still looked leery.

  "I didn't know the guy that picked up Jane was a doppelganger until days later when it tried to kill another of my previously borrowed hosts. Evidently, it had been stalking me. I was putting subsequent hosts in danger."

  Luna's mouth shut so that I could no longer see where it had been on the creature's constantly roiling face, but the eyes were still there, open and glowing red. I wanted to get the heck out of there and reached for the door handle poking me in the back.

  "But there is a problem." Luna's eyes blinked, and I froze.

  Of course, there was a problem. There was always a problem.

  "M
om hasn't quite been herself since we destroyed the serial-killing monster Dorius is looking for."

  I felt Christopher tense. "How do you know so much?"

  Lily had popped her earbuds in, pulled her hPhone out, and was slowly rocking back and forth next to Christopher.

  "One of the bartenders told me." Luna spread out beside Gaire again.

  "Nothing is secret down here," Gaire said. "And anything is possible, for a price."

  "Anyway," Luna said, "back to good old Mom. When she dressed in a man that resembled the ones the killer had worn, and then left for Italy, I became suspicious. My guardian hates going abroad. She doesn't even carry a phone, or use the internet. She's too territorially old school."

  "Even then, I in no way, even for a second, thought Mother would've allowed herself to retain anything from that vile creature. We were both ashamed to call it brethren. But then she showed up here in Purgatory wearing Jane a few days ago. That is not my mother. She'd never select one of my castoffs, never mind let one live. Gaire and I checked. Jane is still on her corner of O.B.T in Orlando."

  "Yeah," Gaire said. "And Luna's guardian would never see her here with me and not do something about it, either."

  "It's because Gaire's a rogue," the doppelganger said. "He's has a price on his head placed there by his father."

  "But that's another story for another night," Gaire said with a charming voice and smiling eyes. "Right now, I'd like to know why you're meeting with Luna's mother."

  Christopher climbed on the corner of the bed. "Her mom is supposed to be able to lead us to a doppelganger that took possession of a werewolf in Italy. It used the double to try to start a war between the immortals and wolves. It killed the wolf it was wearing; the pack leader's son."

  Gaire growled. He jumped off the other side of the bed away from us and stared at Luna. His eyes turned harsh yellow. "That could've been why your mother went to Italy!"

  "I know," Luna squeaked. "But my mother isn't dead. I can sense her under Jane."

  "What if its persona bled into your mother's?" Gaire turned to pace, and his spine rippled. "Would the dominant personality be able to take full control?"

  Luna became cylinder shaped, tight and thick black. "Jane was very controlling. Even though I enjoyed her street mentality, it was hard to contain her."

  Okay, so now I was totally confused.

  Christopher backed off the bed. "Are you friggin telling me that the doppelganger inside of Jane is the same bastard that killed Karl's son?"

  "I am so delighted." Lily popped an earbud out of one ear. "Together, except Aunty Susan, the rest of you have reached the logical conclusion entirely on your own." She popped the earbud back in. "Interesting."

  The kid was vamping up my patience level. So glad she'd be out of there before I crawl out of my new doublewide tomorrow.

  "We're not sure that's true." Gaire annunciated each word while glaring at Lily. His facial features looked sharper, harder.

  "It's alright, Gaire." Luna moved over the bed like a shadow pushed by a ray of sunlight. "Settle down, now."

  "Doubt is a human attribute, wendigo," Lily said. "And so is a lack of control."

  "The demon's right," Luna coaxed. "It all makes perfect sense."

  "Why?" I asked.

  Lily stood on her toes, reached up, and patted me on my shoulder. Eyes soulful, her expression was empathetic.

  Christopher punched the door behind us. "To stage a distraction, Susan—like a big ass war between the vampires and werewolves—just to get close to Antoinette."

  Hold on. Did Lily call Gaire a wendigo?

  "Exactly!" Lily said and clapped her hands, bringing me back into the here-and-now.

  "Now what?" Gaire's voice was a throaty menace.

  "We need to have the elders try an intervention." Luna's form slid up Gaire's body and wrapped around his chest.

  "Is intervention some kind of Otherworld exorcism?" I asked, but my eyes were on Gaire. He was changing.

  "Yes!" Lily spit a laugh, pulled both earbuds out, and stared up at me. "I must find a way to reward you, Aunty!"

  Fuck me. This was not good.

  ~~~

  Twenty

  ~~~

  "Where is Antoinette?" I asked.

  "Probably in Miami." Christopher paced.

  "Crap," Gaire said. "We need to do something," He grabbed a black t-shirt and forced it over his head. "I'm going out to the bar to have a talk with Mommy."

  "Not yet!" Luna said. "And surely not like that! Let's go get Gracie Jean. We have to be sure it's just a bleed over and not the real serial doppelganger before we go to the elders."

  "But if we go to your elders, you and your mother will be held responsible for all of this," Gaire said.

  He was doing this Jekyll—Hyde thing. It was freaking me out.

  "It doesn't matter. I can't let that monster destroy my mother." She unwound her ever changing body from his. "You are absolutely not going. I want to make this right." Luna floated in front of Gaire like a hovercraft.

  "Like hell I am! You're not doing this alone." Gaire's skin popped and contorted. Bent at the waist, he moaned as body parts shifted.

  "Rogaire, stop it! Right now! This second! Do you hear me? You are not leaving Purgatory a wendigo. It will be the death of you. Remember the last time."

  Gaire fell to the floor between the bed and wall on the other side of the room.

  I really didn't want to hear about the last time. I backed away from the bed and pulled Lily with me. Christopher moved in front of us, arms spread. "Don't move," he said, like all three feet, eighty-five pounds of him was a good cover for us. I pushed him aside.

  "What exactly is a wendigo?" My voice shook.

  Lily pulled her hPhone from her pocket and turned it off, but left the earbuds in. "Folklore says: A wendigo is a cannibalistic giant; a person who has been transformed into a monster by the consumption of human flesh. However, lore says vampires were also humans turned by the ingesting or spilling of human blood, of which death is the final outcome. His body is much more impressive than yours, though, don't you agree?"

  A loud, furious growl whipped my attention from Lily. A skeletal body rose from the floor on the far side of the bed and strutted back and forth on two hind legs. Stark white hair billowed around bony shoulders like white fire. All muscle and sinew, it stretched and bent, raking long claws over the duvet cover, slashing it to shreds as he crawled to the other side of the bed. It leapt onto the floor inches from me. I could feel its fetid breath on my skin.

  A bizarre, wolf-like face wore a set of manic eyes, bright red with anger. His teeth didn't quite fit his mouth, and a protruding jaw drooled musky smelling saliva that sizzled as it hit the spread.

  "Damn it, backup, Susan," Christopher said. "That shit dripping from its mouth is deadly."

  Luna's body shook with anger. "Gaire, if you don't reel it back in, I'm going -"

  "I'm not going out into the bar like this, Luna." His voice was gruff and burly, but calm and collected.

  The wendigo rocked back on springy hind legs. He was watching us.

  "What a fine specimen." Lily stepped forward. "He is quite the alpha male of his breed, now isn't he?" She was looking at Luna. "You must be proud."

  Gaire's face darted to Lily's. He was nose-to-nose with her. "I'm not letting Luna meet with the elders alone."

  Christopher was stiff as I pushed by him and up to the beast. "Look, we could talk to the elders without getting either of you involved. This really isn't your issue."

  Slowly, the wendigo turned away from Lily's smiling face and stared at me. "It is inside of Luna's mother. I believe we have as many issues as you."

  "Aunty Susan, I wager, at this very moment, you are thinking how ghastly the wendigo's breath is."

  Gaire reared back and laughed so loud it shook the walls. I was surprised when no one knocked on the door at my back.

  Luna moved across the tattered bed like a shadow. "Gaire, I think we shoul
d go find Gracie Jean."

  Gaire turned to me and drooled. I jumped back and watched its spit burn a hole in the floor. "Gracie sees ghosts. She's a witch and a necromancer. Her mother is dead and she and her ghost friends can follow the doppelganger dressed in Jane, and find the elders. When they do find them, I'll escort you-"

  "Uh-uh, not going to happen. We're all going," Luna told Gaire.

  "None of you are going," Lily said from the other side of Christopher. "I am going to meet with your elders."

  Lily's words soothed the wendigo. The hair that was standing on end all over his body laid down softly against his skin.

  Christopher, on the other hand, was not pleased. "What the hell are you suggesting? Are you nuts?"

  "On the contrary," Lily said. "Do you wish to tell them why, Luna? Or should I?"

  Luna shared a smile with Lily. "Her brethren are the entities that make us. The elders can't touch her. Hell-Demons are the only beings we can't duplicate."

  "This is so not going to happen," Christopher said.

  Lily sighed. "Mate, do you deny my wishes?"

  Christopher puffed anger. "Hell yes, I deny you. You're not going willy-nilly into a den of doppelgangers without me."

  "And what purpose would you serve? Can you defend me? Will you purchase a magic shield and sword like Link in one of our Zelda games, and become a powerful doppelganger slayer? Will I lose my demon genetic factor and turn into a mortal child? Will we wed someday and grow old together?"

  "I get it," Christopher said. "You don't have to be a bitch."

  "I am a demon, Christopher. I am not a bitch. Perhaps you have me confused with one of the werewolf mates in the other room?"

  Dang, the little demon could hold her own. "Look, Lily, your mother would kill me a second time if I let her only kid go off to some doppelganger camp. What say you let us tag along, just in case? We can stay underground. Maybe Luna and Gaire would like to babysit us."

  Lily said, "Christopher, did you just use the phrase willy-nilly?"

  "Yeah." My partner stuffed his hands into the pockets of his pants, rocked his head, and smiled.